


Like No-one Ever Was

by Ardatli



Series: Gotta Catch 'em All [1]
Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Characters Playing Pokemon GO, First Meetings, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 06:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16341341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: Pokemon Go is Teddy's childhood dream come true - his own pokedex, a team to raid with, and control over at least one most excellent city gym. That is, until a new challenger appears...(A short-fiction diptych withI Choose You. Stories can be read in either order.)





	Like No-one Ever Was

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely self-indulgent. Thank you for humouring me. Cover by the ever-amazing Cris-art.

_**Friday:** _

_“Oh, come on.”_

Teddy’s frustrated growl got him the stink-eye from the librarian. He shut his mouth and sank down further in the chair in the New York Public Library, glaring at his phone screen. _Your Snorlax has fought hard and returned!_ … and with a measly two coins to show for it.

“He couldn’t even let me get a full hour in this time?”

Hands braced on the back of Teddy’s chair and he looked up to see Eli staring down at him. “What’s with you?” Eli asked, keeping his voice low so as not to trigger the wrath of the gorgon at the main desk.

Teddy stood and grabbed his backpack, shoving his books inside. “I got knocked out of the Waterfall gym again. That’s the fifth time this week. Some butthead is following me around and doing it on purpose.”

“Are you sure it’s the same guy? A lot of people play, and gyms turn over fast around here.” Eli already had his backpack looped over his shoulder, his volunteer shift done for the day. Teddy shook his head as he followed Eli out the door and down the wide steps of the central branch. He couldn’t be _entirely_ certain, not without actually going past the gym and seeing the whites of the avatar’s eyes, but he was sure enough.

“It’s him.” Teddy shoved his phone back in his pocket, not bothering to revive the Snorlax. Let him sulk for a while and think about what he’d done. “Team Mystic. There’s a certain amount of common courtesy you should be able to expect from fellow players,” he suggested, poking a finger at Eli.

Eli rolled his eyes, but his smile was faintly indulgent. Fine. So he’d heard the rant before, but he was a good friend and was letting Teddy vent anyway. “If someone’s only had a gym for a few minutes, leave it alone! Come back the next day and retake it, but there is such a thing as taking turns.”

“It’s a battle game,” Eli pointed out, so maybe not such a good friend after all. “You don’t just let the other team take a turn with the ball in football without trying to get it back.”

“That’s different.”

“It’s really not. If we’re playing Overwatch, I’m not going to stand still and let you shoot me just because I have more points than you. You have to get good.”

Teddy grinned. “We always play on the same team in Overwatch. Are you saying I don’t have the competitive spirit?”

Eli clapped him on the shoulder, pausing for a second to spin the library gym as they passed. “I’m saying that instead of worrying about making blue team share, we should be coming up with an annihilation plan. Call Nate this weekend and get him to come along. We’ll paint the town Valor-red.”

“V for Victory?” Teddy asked, his mood picking up again. So ‘Wizzard’ was a jerk—whoever he was. With a little research it wouldn’t be that hard to find the gyms _he_ was in and knock all of his ‘mon out. As a lesson. “You’re on.”

He turned his ball cap backwards on his head and struck a pose. “I’m Teddy Altman of Brooklyn town in New York Region, and I will not let this insult go unavenged!”

A couple of kids on the steps laughed at him, Eli snorted, and a guy pushing a stroller picked up the pace, like he was worried Teddy was going to start throwing things or issuing real-life challenges.

“Remind me why I hang out with you again, you big dork?”

“Because your grandmother thinks I’m adorable and puts out extra pie when I come over.”

They headed into the park, the grass green beneath Teddy’s feet, and the early fall sunshine warming him through. He hadn’t felt this good in a long time, and not just because of the game. New school, new—and much better—friends, and sometimes, like now, the feeling that the world was waiting at his feet.

Something good was around the corner, something that would make his last awful year nothing more than distant memory. Or better yet, a bad dream. 

For the moment, though… hit with a flash of guilt, Teddy pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and revived his Snorlax. “Sorry. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

“Please tell me you’re not talking to your Pokémon.”

Busted. “It’s like talking to plants to make them grow better. It’s strategy.” Teddy grinned, refused to answer, and jogged to catch up with Eli on the path.

“It’s insanity. They’re pixels.”

“But they’re my pixels and I love them.”

“You need help.”

* * *

**_Sunday_ **

They were walking down East 40th street, less than two blocks from the gym they’d just reclaimed, when Wizzard struck again.

_Milotic needs a berry!_

“Come on,” Teddy urged, breaking into a jog. His backpack thumped against his hip, afternoon traffic and construction loud around them. The battle animation was swirling around the red cartoon tower when he glanced down at his phone, but by the time he, Nate and Eli skidded to a halt by the Phoenix Garden restaurant doors, the gym was already rising and blue.

Teddy whirled around, but no-one seemed to be on their phones, at least not game-style. Passing shoppers, woman in business suit, delivery guys… and a whole bunch of tall apartment buildings, which put a whole lot of people in range that he’d never see.

“Nooo,” Teddy mourned, glaring at the innocuous waterfall in the real-world courtyard that was happily oblivious to the virtual-reality coup going on around it.

“He’s taking this really seriously,” Teddy heard Nate say behind him.

“You have no idea.”

Ignoring them, Teddy tapped on the gym icon on the overworld map, expanding the images of the groups of players currently holding it.

It was the same old Team Mystic group that had been making him nuts most of the summer – girl avatar, level 40, nickname Hawkeye. Girl avatar, level 27, nickname GiantGirl. Boy avatar, level 38, nickname Wizzard. And as for their pokemon-

“Unfair. That jerk’s got a Kangaskhan!”

* * *

 

**_Tuesday:_ **

“Ugh, he put his Blissey in again. I really hate that thing.”

 

 

* * *

**_Thursday:_ **

“He’s got a Relicanth?? How even?”

* * *

**_Friday:_ **

“That’s my gym, Eli. MINE.”

“You’re obsessing.” Eli kicked back on the couch in his grandmother’s basement, putting his algebra textbook aside. “There are what, fifty thousand people in the city who play? Somehow I doubt this guy’s targeting you specifically. You probably just take the same trains.”

Teddy dropped his phone in his backpack so that he wouldn’t be tempted to keep looking at it and turned back to his math homework. “You’re probably right,” he admitted, staring down at the equations.

Time passed, marked only by the scratching of pencils on paper, until finally Teddy looked up. “It’s too bad though,” he said wistfully.

Eli’s head rose slowly, and he blinked. “I’m going to regret asking this, but why?”

“Because if he was doing it on purpose, then I’d have… a _rival._ A real nemesis. My own Gary Oak.”

Eli snorted at him again. “I’d say something about you having no life if that’s what you’ve got to look forward to. But we’re both here doing homework on Friday night, so what do I know.”

There was that. Except Teddy’d had his fill of boring high school parties where all he did was pretend to be drinking the beer that got shoved in his hand and be on hand to witness Greg trying to flirt. “You’d rather be on a date,” he guessed.

“No offense,” Eli replied quickly, putting a hand up. “It’s not that I mind the company. It’s just… what are we doing with our high school years?”

“Trying to get into decent colleges?” Teddy grimaced. “That sounds like I’ve given up. Maybe I have,” he reasoned out loud. “It’s not like I’m even out at school. You and Nate are pretty much the only ones who know – and even if I were openly gay, I’d still be the only guy in our grade.

“Maybe it’ll be easier in college.”

“Maybe. Okay. What’d you get for question fourteen?” Eli still sounded dubious, or maybe a little wistful, but Teddy didn’t push it. Eli was good-looking, and smart as hell; he’d have no problem finding a girlfriend if he met someone he liked enough to make time for. And then who would Teddy hang out with on Friday nights?

* * *

**_Saturday again, a week later:_ **

Exhausted and probably a little sun-stroked, Teddy collapsed backward over the end of the couch and sprawled there, feet dangling over the arm. The power cord for his charger hung from the shelf, just out of fingertip reach. He stretched for it anyway, his phone sitting at a sad and pathetic 2%.

Eli dropped into the armchair opposite, can of coke in his hand. “That was way too many people.”

“You said that last Community Day, and you came to this one anyway.”

“For a chance at completing my shiny ‘dex? Damn right I did.”

Teddy’s fingertips brushed the dangling end of his charger—almost—and then he grabbed it, flopping back down on the couch with the cord in hand. He peeled off the nametag (Hi, My Name Is…) with his trainer code on it that the local store had been handing out, balled it up and tossed it in the general direction of the trash.

“Did you get it?” he asked, thumbing open the game again once his phone was securely plugged in and recharging. “Holy crap, twenty-six friend requests.”

“Three shinies,” Eli said smugly. “And nice — if you can keep those rolling for a week that’s an easy seventy-eight thousand XP right there.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen. I don’t have the faintest idea who most of these people are.” Teddy scrolled down through the list until he sat up with a yelp. The cord tugged, jerking his phone out of his hands, and he had to scramble to grab it as it skidded across the floor, freed from its tether. “Holy crap, it’s him!”

“Him who?” Eli looked up from his phone—plugged in to a solid brick of a battery and humming along smoothly as it had been all afternoon—and snickered at Teddy’s low dive.

“Wizzard. The butthead who keeps sniping my gyms. He sent me a friend request.” Teddy’s phone blooped at him and turned off in his hand. He pushed himself to his feet and plugged it back in, flopping over on the couch again while it tried to get some power back in the system. “He must not know who I am. I didn’t put ‘Hulkling’ on my nametag.”

A pause, then it hit him. “… oh my God. That means he was there. And he was close enough to read my tag. Eli, I stood _right next to my rival_ and had no idea. Talk about your missed opportunities!”

Eli nodded, setting his phone down on his knee. “All those missed chances for in-person smack talk with someone you’ve never even seen, sure.” Teddy shot him a look, but Eli only grinned back. “Sorry. I should know better than to mock your nemesis.” He didn’t sound sorry at all. “There were at least a couple hundred people in the park for community day. Any one stand out in particular?”

“Only everyone and no-one all at once,” Teddy shrugged helplessly. How was he supposed to pick out one face to be the person behind the incredibly generic fair-skinned, dark-haired computer-generated avatar? Except…

“You’re thinking of someone, I can see it. Spill.”

“One,” Teddy admitted reluctantly. “And mostly because of the girls with him.”

“Teddy, _you_?” Eli teased, and Teddy threw a pillow at him.

 “Only because they matched the pattern, alright? The people he’s always taking gyms with. Dark haired girl, blonde girl…”

“And?”

Teddy’s cheeks ran a little hot. “And a really cute guy. He was at the Zapdos raid at the statue with his friends about an hour after we got to Bryant Park. Dark hair, brown eyes, shorter than me, he was wearing… oh man. A Team Mystic t-shirt. Do you think-”

Eli frowned, staring off into the middle distance. “He was hanging out with the girl in purple, right? Cute Asian girl, long hair, long legs, purple headband.”

“How do you even remember that?” Teddy asked, bemused.

“How do you remember what colour that guy’s eyes were?” Eli shot back, undaunted.

“Touché.”

It probably wasn’t him. There was no reason to believe that the completely anonymous ‘Wizzard’ was actually the slim, laughing boy who talked with his hands, whose bright, sharp smile had all but given Teddy whiplash as they’d passed each other in the park.

But what if it was?

Teddy lunged for his phone over the sound of Eli’s laughter, scrambling to turn it back on and get the game open. He managed to accept the friend request before the battery crapped out on him again, but only just.

_What if?_

* * *

**_Monday:_ **

“Are you ready to go?”

“Hang on; I’m just sending a gift to Wizzard. Get this – he’s got an Exeggcutor for a buddy, and he named it _Treebeard_.”

“Is that a D&D thing?”

“Lord of the Rings. Close enough.”

“Teddy, my friend, I’m starting to suspect that your nemesis is a massive nerd.”

* * *

**_Wednesday:_ **

The first gift back from Wizzard came with a postcard from the 40th Waterfall gym that they’d been fighting over for weeks.

Jerk.

“I told you it was on purpose!”

“Can we talk about literally anything else?”

* * *

**_Saturday:_ **

It was on impulse, partly because it made him laugh and partly because he was… yeah, okay, he was kind of hoping it would make Wizzard laugh as well. But mostly in a fit of pique because he was still annoyed from having to trek out to East 40th and 2nd and take his gym back for the third time that week.

Anyway, Teddy took pretty much the only means of communication he had open to him and renamed his lucky Larvitar buddy _Wizzardsbane_.

Within a day, Wizzard had a new buddy — a Machamp he’d nicknamed _Hulkbuster_.

Son of a…

Also, _hunh._

* * *

The gift exchanges themselves weren’t anything special—it wasn’t like a player had any control over what was in the little yellow boxes. But the cards that came with them, now those were getting more interesting by the day.

At first it had been the Fountain gym over and over again, and then nothing for a few days. So much of a nothing that Teddy was worried that he’d somehow screwed something up—or maybe Wizzard had finally gotten mad at him for taking the gym back so many times.

That, or he’d gotten bored with the game. Other people had lives, Teddy reminded himself. They didn’t spend the bulk of their free time smudging wear-circles into their phone screens. The whole thing could have been a late-summer early-fall diversion, something that had been momentarily entertaining but not in any way meaningful.

Teddy would be better off if he disconnected for a while and did the same thing, frankly.

He closed the game and tossed his phone onto his nightstand, grabbing the book he’d been halfway through for months. He’d wind down for bed by reading instead of screwing around online. 

His phone buzzed and Teddy grabbed for it. _A friend has sent you a gift!_

So much for keeping his cool.

Teddy swiped the phone open and blinked a couple of times at the gift screen. It wasn’t the gym, not this time. It was from one of the better comic shops in town; one that was way uptown and definitely out of Teddy’s usual stomping grounds.

He opened it and fired one back in return, not thinking about the choice until afterward. Bryant Park, behind the central library. He was out of fountain ones anyway, hadn’t been by there in a few days.

After _that_ he turned off his phone for real, sinking back into his book and trying his best not to think about computer games, comic shops, and faceless rivals on the other end of the internet connection.

* * *

The gifts continued after that, one after another on the march to thirty days of interaction and ‘Ultra Friends,’ and Teddy started to notice patterns in the daily arrivals. The same few locations kept cycling through, though not in any particular order. The comic shop, the video game store down the street from the central library, the handful of stops in the north end of Central Park. Whoever Wizzard was, his routine took him through the ritzier areas of Manhattan a lot more often than Teddy’s did. Like a whole week’s run from the Starbucks at the corner of Columbus and West 100th, smack dab in the middle of the Upper West Side.

_Oh come on._

Teddy started sending postcards of graffiti art in grodier sections of Brooklyn in response to that little bit of showing-off.

It settled into a pattern then, a call-and-response of pictures that seemed—assuming Teddy wasn’t reading way, way too much into it—an awful lot like sharing.

_Here’s a part of my day._

_Here’s a thing that I like._

_Here’s a thing that made me think of you._

_I liked your thing, here’s another thing like it._

Teddy went half an hour out of his way on the train to stop in at the comic shop that Wizzard seemed to go to most. He didn’t see anyone there who might have been him, but he did collect a couple of gifts from the stop just to freak Wizzard out.

Was that stalking? The wobbly feeling in his stomach suggested he might have gone too far.

Teddy sent all but one of those to other people. Wizzard got the Zoo Mural that night instead.

* * *

A few days later, home and sacked out after another community day (this time without the same dark-eyed boy anywhere to be seen), Teddy acted on impulse and sent the last comic shop gift.

He regretted it the moment it winged its way across the ether, but there was no saving him now.

 _I’ve been on your turf,_ that gift announced.

Not just _I recognized it_ but _I went out of my way to get near to you._

A _where were you today_ poke that no-one but Teddy would ever understand.

Would it be so bad if Wizzard did understand? The fantasy bubbled up again from the inner recesses of his head. It wasn’t even about romance, not necessarily. But a friend who seemed to want the connection as much as he did, something that spoke to a quiet longing inside.

_See me. Understand me._

Eli was right; Teddy was way too invested in something ridiculous. He was approaching serious creep levels, and he needed to stop picking the scab off of something that was one-hundred-percent all in his head.

* * *

**_Later that night:_ **

**Teddy:** He hasn’t opened it yet. Eliiiiiiiii.

 **Eli:** It’s 2 am, you idiot. I’m turning off my phone.

* * *

Wizzard had sent him a gift in return (the comic shop again, so maybe he was forgiven? Or maybe Wizzard was sending random things and really hadn’t noticed anything) by the time Teddy got up the next day.

He managed to put the whole thing mostly out of his mind for the next week, focusing on school and restricting his playing to the trip between school and home. Basketball tryouts were coming up, he had projects due and tests to study for, and winning the affections of someone he’d never met and was unlikely ever _to_ meet was too big a distraction.

Still, every day when he got home he’d send one of the gifts he’d picked up along the way. There was no sense in messing up a streak when he was getting close to the next friendship-level bonus, right? Even Eli, king of the XP grind, understood that one.

* * *

**_Two weeks passed_ **

Hanging out at Nate’s, tossing the basketball around in his driveway, Eli stopped mid-pass and frowned at Teddy. “Okay, spill it.”

“Spill what?” Teddy asked, bouncing on his toes and keeping his eye on the ball.

“You haven’t said anything about the game, or Wizzard, or that gym in – in what, Nate?”

“Eleven days,” Nate confirmed, stealing the ball from Eli’s hands and shooting it at the basket. “We’re starting to worry about you.”

Teddy rolled his eyes and ran to catch the ball on the rebound off the backboard. “I thought you guys were sick of hearing me talk about it. _I’m_ getting sick of hearing me talk about it.”

He didn’t miss the look they exchanged. “What?”

“I thought this guy was ‘ridiculously cute,’” Eli quoted Teddy’s own misfire back to him.

“It might not be him,” Teddy replied, firing the ball straight from his chest in Nate’s general direction. “It could be a middle-aged soccer mom for all I know.”

Eli snagged the ball out of the air before it made it to Nate and fired it through the hoop. “Which would explain the Starbucks, but not the rest of it. How did you go from obsession to not-even-curious over the course of a few days?”

Teddy shrugged, dropping back on his heels. “Dunno. Maybe I just decided to let it go.”

_Liar._

“Face it,” Nate said solemnly. “You’re the only one of us with anything even remotely interesting happening. You owe it to us to see this through. For science.”

* * *

Teddy frowned, considering his options. _See it through,_ Nate had said, confessing to his curiosity about the whole series of interactions. If Teddy left things the way they were and looked back twenty years from now, would he regret never knowing? Or would it be one amusing blip in his past, an online ships-passing-in-the-night like so many others?

There was no way to send a message through the system to just one other player, not without broadcasting his thoughts to everyone on his friends list. He’d poked at the local Discord and subreddit, but either Wizzard was using a different nickname on those, or he didn’t post there at all.

What were his other choices?

Community Day was in three weeks. Wizzard had been at the August one, but he—or at least the guy Teddy thought he was—hadn’t been around Bryant Park at the September one. But maybe he could be persuaded to show up somewhere during the October event.

What had gotten his attention before? Sending the Fountain Gym gifts for a couple of weeks had done it. And then sending the comic shop in Wizzard’s neck of the woods. Maybe if Teddy changed his pattern now, started doing something more specifically targeted, Wizzard would take notice.

The plan was a long shot—if he didn’t get it, if he didn’t care, or cared but didn’t catch on, then Teddy was going to be spending a lot of the afternoon waiting for someone who wouldn’t show up. Was it worth it?

Maybe.

Carrying space for only ten gifts at a time wasn’t a lot to store things for a master plan, especially since he had other friendships going on, but they could survive without him for a week or two.

He made the trek uptown the next day, filled his storage with gifts from the comic shop’s pokestop, ignoring the funny looks from a couple of the regulars. Then every day at two pm, for the next three weeks, he’d send one. _Meet me at two_ , he hoped it conveyed. Community Day was the obvious upcoming date.

If the guy was psychic and could read Teddy’s mind, that was. On a whim, and hoping that it wouldn’t be entirely obvious to anyone else who happened to see it, he renamed his buddy _10-21-2 pm._

Feeling absolutely ridiculous, and more than a little queasy about the whole thing, Teddy ignored his phone the rest of the day.

* * *

**Teddy:** HELP.

 **Eli:** What’s up? You’re not in school today

 **Teddy:** I’m home, puking. I got some kind of stomach thing.

 **Eli:** Gross. I’ll get your homework for you.

 **Teddy:** I need a bigger favor than that. You’ve gotta help.

 **Eli:** … tell me what it is first.

 **Teddy:** I only have one gift left and I need to keep up my streak for another four days.

 **Eli:** I am not going to the comic shop for you.

 **Teddy:** Please? I’ll give you my password, all you need to do is log in as me and spin the stop a few times.

 **Eli:** I’m volunteering at the library tonight

 **Teddy:** After?

 **Teddy** : You and Nate were the ones who told me to do something about this.

 **Teddy:** You want to know who he is as bad as I do.

 **Eli:** … fine. But you owe me. You owe me BIG.

 **Teddy:** You’re the best friend a guy ever had.

 **Eli:** Flattery isn’t going to erase this debt, but I’ll keep that in mind.

* * *

**_D-Day:_ **

Community Day, anyway, the monthly event that saw increased spawns, special play bonuses, and thousands of nerds and geeks wandering around the city staring at their phones. More than usual, that is.

Teddy made his way uptown to the comic shop, unsure whether the unsettled feeling in his gut was nerves, or left-over food poisoning from the dubious hot-dog cart. There hadn’t been time (or money, let’s be honest) to buy a team shirt, so he had a Valor pin-back badge pinned to his jacket instead. Other than wear a sign that said ‘Hi, my PoGo name is Hulkling,’ there wasn’t a lot else he could do.

(There had been a couple of open spots on a nearby gym, and he threw Wizzardsbane in there as a breadcrumb to show that he was in the neighbourhood. But like everything, that depended on Wizzard seeing the gym, thinking to expand the gym, and actively swiping through the defenders to see if Hulkling’s name was on the list. Too much work.)

Two in the afternoon came and went, with no sign of him. A handful of customers were chatting loudly about the game, and the event, but none of them looked at him. And then they left en masse, and Teddy’s heart sank.

Two-fifteen and still nothing. He tried to stop himself from looking at his phone, paging slowly through the back issue boxes.

Two thirty.

It wasn’t going to happen.

He did page through his friend list, just in case. But Wizzard had sent him a gift that morning already, so any contact wasn’t going to come through that way. Disappointed, annoyed with himself for being disappointed, and irritated with Eli and Nate even though he hadn’t had to go along with their encouragement in the first place…

Yeah. Tangled up in all those feelings, Teddy paid for his comics and headed for the door.

And froze on the step until a couple of girls nudged him out of their way and he dropped to stand on the sidewalk.

Because there, leaning against the wall outside, his dark hair messy and a jacket thrown on over his blue team Mystic t-shirt-

No, now, shoving his phone in his pocket and rubbing his eyes, straightening up like he was ready to go-

“Hey,” Teddy approached before the guy could leave, his heart in his throat. “Is, um.” _Hi, I’m Hulkling-_ That would sound way too weird if this wasn’t him after all. And yet everything in him was singing. “Is everything ok?” he asked instead, offering a hesitant smile.

The boy looked up, and holy crap. He was better looking than Teddy had remembered—high arcing cheekbones and a mouth that looked like he spent more time smiling than not, and long, dark lashes that swept against his golden skin.

“Sorry? Yeah —yeah,” the boy answered, then tailed off into silence. He stared at Teddy and seemed somehow… lost. It was just for a minute, then he snapped out of it, his face changing to something that seemed a lot more hopeful. “I was waiting for someone, but I thought maybe they weren’t going to show.”

Choirs of angels, man. Entire choirs. And from the way he was looking back at Teddy (the rainbow belt helped), Teddy was willing to bet just about anything that Wizzard wasn’t a hundred-percent straight either.

Teddy owed Eli _and_ Nate a whole lot more than he could ever repay.

“If you’re Wizzard,” Teddy said haltingly, and the sun rose in the boy’s eyes, turning them from ‘brown’ to glowing caramel, or- something wonderful and warm, anyway. “Then I’m the one you were waiting for. I’m Hulkling. And I thought the same thing, except I was waiting for you. Inside,” he confessed, cheeks flushing warm. “I’m, um. Glad you didn’t leave.”

“It _is_ you,” Wizzard blurted out, then clamped his mouth shut, blushing as red as Teddy’s face felt. “That is, um. I was pretty sure, but you never know with internet handles, and … yeah. Hi. It’s good to meet you in person. What’s your real name, by the way?”

He was rambling, which probably meant he was nervous too, and for some reason that calmed Teddy’s own anxiety right down to almost nothing. “Teddy,” he offered, extending his hand. Maybe it was hokey or too playing-at-being-grownup, but he wanted an excuse to touch him, to make sure, somehow, that he was actually real.

“Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Billy.” And Billy took his hand, his shake warm and strong. “If they’d added a PVP option in the game, this is where we’d have to challenge each other to a battle,” he joked, dropping Teddy’s hand but never moving his gaze from Teddy’s eyes.

Teddy laughed, ducking his head and looking down for a moment, breaking the connection. But Billy was still there when he looked up, and still smiling. “How about grabbing Starbucks instead? There’s apparently a good one not far from here.”

Billy hesitated for a second then caught on, breaking into a soft huff of a laugh. “Yeah, there is. And I’d like that.” He turned to go, hands sliding into his pockets, and Teddy fell in step beside him. This part felt too easy, the awkward starting to fade away and get replaced with the wonder that he’d actually pulled this off.

 _Now, who are you really?_ He had the afternoon to try and find out.  

“Do you travel a lot? I noticed you had all the regionals,” Teddy asked.

Billy shook his head, but he did grin at Teddy’s admission that he was keeping track. “Not me, unfortunately. My best friend Kate—she goes with her dad on his business trips and she traded them to me when she got home.”

“Lucky. I’d do a lot for some of the really obscure ones, but flying to New Zealand isn’t in the cards, unfortunately.”

“… I don’t suppose you’d consider trading me that Smackdown Tyranitar.”

“Not on your life, Mystic boy.”

“Oh well. I had to try.”

They walked on, the sun shining down on them and warming Teddy through despite the crispness to the fall air. Maybe this wouldn’t end up going anywhere further than an iced coffee and an afternoon of Pokémon-hunting, or making a new casual friend. He could be satisfied with that. But something inside him, something warm and bubbly and wonderful, hinted that their adventure was only just beginning.  


End file.
